Travel Plans
by Angela6257
Summary: Special Agent Kensi Blye did not want to go.  Detective Marty Deeks wishes he was.
1. Chapter 1

**Authour's Note: After having been an NCIS:Original fan for many years, I only recently discovered NCIS: Los Angeles...and somehow the newbie has superseded the veteran, and I am absolutely in love. I've been devouring fic and vids and watching old eps until I am practically obsessed. So much so that I find myself writing fanfic for the first time in years. Literally. I've got a longer, more complicated fic brewing in my head, but this one just plopped itself out first.**

**I, of course, own nothing, not even my beloved Kensi and Deeks. I just want to play with them a bit before I return them.**

Special Agent Kensi Blye did not want to go.

Mostly when Kensi doesn't want to do something, she doesn't. Strong-willed and more than able-bodied, she's reached a point in her life where there are very few who can make her do anything against her will—and fewer still who would try. Her partner certainly wouldn't, unless he thought it'd be good for her. Her team knows better, except for maybe her team leader. And the diminutive Operations Manager would be the most likely to have any success.

But for the most part, Kensi makes her own rules and her own plans and certainly her own travel itineraries.

This one should have been no different.

She'd started planning only a couple of days ago. A phone call late in the night courtesy of a different time zone. A semi-urgent request, an old friend who dates way back. Someone her father had known. Someone who'd known her father and who, she suspects, may know something about his death. She can't completely dismiss the idea that the request for her presence may be somehow related to her father, and for that reason alone she couldn't just refuse it out of hand. And at first, it had sounded appealing. Back to Hawaii, land of sunshine and pineapples and people who smiled at her and where she didn't face even the possibility that she'd have to pull out her service weapon and shoot someone. She hated Christmas anyway, hated the festivity and the greeting cards and the carols and just every part of it. Christmas was little more than reminder of what she didn't have, what she'd had and lost, every person who'd slipped through her slender fingers since she was 15 and a kind-hearted Marine was trying to explain the inexplicable. Flying to Hawaii over Christmas should have been the most appealing offer she'd had in years.

But she'd forgotten about Deeks. Forgotten about last year's "date". Forgotten how his blue eyes had softened at a homeless shelter filled with people who should have been miserable, but somehow weren't there in the warmth and glow of a shared holiday. Forgotten about how lonely Deeks himself was, with his history of never ever having had even the brief happiness that a young Kensi herself had known. And forgotten about how Deeks could somehow rise past the loneliness he'd always known to make Christmas about helping others.

And now this—a special bottle of a home-brewed potion, made no doubt by one of his numerous lady friends. Something that could have been corny, but instead had warmed Kensi from the inside out and begun to thaw out some of the frozen places that always crept in during this particular holiday. Something to keep her skin soft and tender, and maybe—just maybe—to keep her heart that way too.

She sighed deeply, looking down at the bottle still with its festive green-and-red bow attached. All of a sudden, Hawaii didn't look nearly as appealing. Instead she thought of a homeless shelter and warm blue eyes and a mop of ragged blonde hair, and before she knew it her phone was in her hands.

Travel plans could always be postponed. Especially when Kensi Blye decided she wanted to stay right where she was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: So originally I intended the first part to be a one-shot, but Deeks had some stuff to say and he wouldn't stay out of my head until I gave him the opportunity. You guys know how he can be... Plus I needed some practice writing him before I start on the plotalicious fic I'm stewing on right now. So here you go.**

**Still don't own them. Still wish I did!  
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Detective Marty Deeks wished he had someplace to go.

It should be simple. Leave if he wants. Stay if he doesn't. He has no family, no ties, nothing holding him back from just hopping a plane or his car or a bike or a surfboard even. Sometimes he feels a little bitter about his lack of family ties, but mostly he's content. He's never really had one, after all, and you can't miss what you don't have, right?

He's made his own family of sorts. He has connections, both casual and close. Somehow out of the loneliness and chaos of his childhood, he's forged the ability to connect with people, and he's never really met a stranger. His goofy nature and sheer affability may occasionally drive his team members crazy, but it's also given him a sort of innate friendliness and nonthreatening demeanor that causes people to just plain like him. Especially female-type people, which has always been a bit of a bonus. His eye for the ladies has been unerring and infallible.

And the last couple of years he's had what some would consider a real family. He knows he might not have been their first choice (if they'd had one), but he's one of them now. One of a small band of people who care deeply about each other, who live double lives to the outside but hide very little from each other. Who know each other better than their own families do—those few of them that have outside families, anyway. Bonds forged in bullets and blood and in the quiet time of stakeouts and the chaos of explosions and most of all the trust and faith it takes to put your life in someone else's hands. Bonds that are unbreakable and unshakeable.

But something is different now. Something has changed, and mostly he thinks it's just him. Now when he flirts with a hottie, sure, part of it is just his nature. And part of it may be genuine. But the bigger part of it is an effort to get a rise out of his partner. He finds himself wondering sometimes (most of the time) what she's thinking when she goes silent. And something drives him to pull her out of wherever she goes when she stops talking. He's a little more careful with his appearance than he used to be, although truly most people would be surprised just how much time and product goes into the careful disorder of his hair. Does his shirt match his pants? Should it be these shoes or those? Decisions that have never weighed on him before now sometimes have him spending moments he hadn't planned surveying himself in the mirror. And he does this even knowing the ribbing he'll take when he wanders into the mission later than he should be.

He'd seen a genuine smile on her face earlier that night. As he'd described the ingredients that had gone into the lotion he'd ordered especially for her after finding out she had "plans", he'd watched the smile on her face grow. First the quirk of the lips, and then it had widened until he'd seen those two dimples he absolutely adored. And finally, finally he'd seen it in her eyes. He hadn't seen that in some time, not since he'd had to look her in the eye and lie to her. Not since he'd had to stop her from speaking about her feelings, stop her from speaking about what he'd been absolutely dying to hear, and feign a casualness that had caused a spark of hurt to flare in her eyes and arrow straight to his own heart.

Something had been damaged between them then. Something he hadn't properly appreciated until it was gone, something fragile and tenuous and oh so precious. She'd understood once it was explained to her, and she couldn't disagree with the need for the deception. But it hadn't undone the damage they'd all done to her. And worse yet, the unspeakable damage he'd done himself. Her smiles had been easy since then, but they hadn't been genuine and he'd not seen them echoed in her eyes like a real smile should be.

Not until tonight anyway. He sighed, sitting back in his chair, relishing still the sight of that beautiful smile glowing in her eyes. He thought in some ways he'd be dining on that sight for weeks to come.

But his own eyes dimmed a bit. He'd have to live with the memory of that smile, because she was gone, off on some bit of travel that clearly wasn't just for pleasure. He was worried about her and worried for her, and hoped she'd find some peace in whatever it was she was choosing to do for the holiday. As for himself, he had his own plans for tonight—his usual trip to the soup kitchen. But after having spent last year there with Kensi, he thought perhaps this year the experience wouldn't be quite as pleasurable as before. Without Kensi, everything felt a little flat.

He wished he had someplace to go. Someplace far off and exotic. Someplace with warmth and sun and gorgeous waves. And more importantly, someplace where a gorgeous brunette with mismatched eyes was waiting on the beach for him to finish with his board. But that clearly wasn't going to happen, not this year anyway. He sighed, then grabbed his keys. At least at the soup kitchen he could make someone else happy.

But before he got out the door, his phone rang, and after a very brief conversation his eyes lit up and his own smile broadened. All it took was one brief stop to pick up his partner on the way to the soup kitchen, and his life was pretty perfect again.

Marty Deeks had someplace to go.


End file.
